Dark As Night
by FireEmberAsh
Summary: A world where the Fire Nation has wiped out two out of the four elemental tribes, and the avatar cycle is broken. The Spirits have retreated from the world, and technology has regressed. Long after their conquest of the world, when only a fragment of the water tribe remain, a young soldier lives in a black and white world of propaganda, fighting to see the truth.
1. Chapter 1

Dark as Night

I stare at the rocky hill across the stream, wondering what could lie behind it, as I've never traveled the distance to check. The sun climbs towards its noonday position, setting the village I call home in the brightest part of the day. The light reflects off the stream on the northern side of the village, a water highway that flows from east to west on the ground, a parallel to the sun in the sky. On the other three sides of the village, dense forest eclipses the sun for all but midday.

Our village is clustered in a small block around the town center, a patch of grass where all the members of the village eagerly await news from the capital city, the Crown Jewel of the King.

Within the town square, a stool sits idly atop which messengers pronounce the decrees of our governor. The governor is a short round man with a thick mustache who lives upstream. He only visits once a year at shipment time to make ensure that we fulfill our quota of fruit and nuts for the capital.

Since the forest is so thick, we can't clear out any of the land for farming. Instead we have to rely on the fruits and nuts that grow at the treetop for food, as well as fish from the stream and occasionally, meat from forest animals.

I glance up at the sun, careful not to look for too long. It's almost noon, so I rush along the thin dirt pathways between houses towards the town center. I'm nearly late for the reading of the scheduled news message from the capital city. A messenger had arrived in the morning on a small river barge from downstream, with a message to deliver at noon.

I run into the town square, and join my sister, Amber. She's kind of tall, with brown hair, and eyes the color of the sky, like a clear pond on a sunny day. She looks at me with a twinkle in her eye, amused that I was almost late for the message from the capital, even though I had spent all morning talking about it as I cleaned our house and prepared our food for lunch.

She moves over to give space for me to stand next to her.

"Hey Natán," she whispers. "Glad that you made it on time." She laughs quietly, and I shake my head at the joke.

"I made it," I whisper in response. "That's what counts." I fix my brown hair, which was messed up by my quick run across the village. We turn towards the small wooden stool in the center of the square, and try and figure out what the message from the capital is about.

We see the messenger from the capital, a tall man with fair skin and brown eyes, step onto the short stool in the center of the square. He has a black triangular hat on his head with the point in front, and a well trimmed beard on his lower lip. He takes the white sheepskin scroll and unrolls it, his left hand on the top portion, and his right hand on the bottom, holding it taut.

Amber's sharp blue eyes glance quickly at various parts of the messenger, from his hat, the sheepskin scroll in his left hand to the bulge under his cloak where a sword could be. My eyes are a sharp contrast to her light, swift eyes. Mine are obsidian black, so dark that you can't see light reflected off of them from a candle held close. And I don't have nearly the attention to detail that Amber has.

"Do you see anything?" I whisper to Amber. She begins, but an adult behind us lets out a "Hush! It's about to start!"

He begins reading the letter out in a clear, loud voice, if accented slightly with a tendency to roll his r's when they're at the end of a word.

"The king of the Fire Monarchy, King Inferno II, our high priest to the Lord of Light and Fire, would like to address his people in the town of Cinder. And I quote 'A great threat has befallen our nation, a threat that could destroy the lives all people living justly and righteously within the Fire Monarchy. I speak, of course, of the Water Nation, the evil band of warlords that seeks to end our very way of life." He pauses for a breath, and Amber takes advantage of that time to whisper

"Well that can't be right," she whispers to me.

"Of course it's right, silly!" I tell her, a bit louder than I meant. The messenger looks up, huffs, and says

"If I may continue?" I duck sheepishly at the rebuke and after a moment, he resumes his speech.

"The Water Nation has always been a nuisance to the Fire Monarchy, but in recent times, they have gathered together all of their forces to oppress the good people of the Fire Monarchy. I ask of you today to do your best to support our holy war against the Water Nation in every way. I ask of the young to fix the mistakes of the old. I ask of the toddlers that you gather the berries and nuts dropped by the workers, who think they're too insignificant to lean down for. And I ask the fit and healthy among you to work to your limit- and beyond, to support our crusade against our unholy enemies. Praise the Light!" the messenger said.

"Praise the Light!" the crowd responded in unison, including me, who at the time, was sure that I had yelled it loudest, and had a smug look on my face afterward.

Amber's Perspective

"Praise the Light!" the crowd yelled. I let out a halfhearted "Praise the Light" but wasn't really feeling the "righteous fury" that I should have against our "unholy enemies". No one has seen a Water Nationer in decades, and almost half of the town is too young to even remember the name of the last battle we'd had against them. My brother Natán yelled the line as loudly as he could, and he had the bright conviction in his eyes that the messenger so easily sparked. He had to realize at least a little bit though, how much of it was a lie.

After the round of "Praise the Light" the crowds' response subsided and they began to disperse, but the messenger held up his hand. The crowd stopped, interested at the possibility of a second message.

The messenger started, but the curious murmurs of the crowd drowned him out. He waited until the whispered questions passed between people had been answered, then began again.

"You would be good to make good on what the King has asked of you in his speech, since the annual quota for berries has increased by ten percent and the quota for nuts and fish has increased by fifteen percent. Dismissed." He waved his hand in the most unapologetically dismissive fashion that I had ever seen. Now when the crowd dispersed, it wasn't with the resounding echoes of "Praise the Light" but with the harsh whisperings between worried child and more worried parent.

Natán and I walked through the winding, thin dirt paths between houses, careful not to cut ourselves on nails sticking out from the rotting pieces of wood so common on homes in our village. Since all of the trees around our village are technically productive assets, since they produce nuts and fruit they belong to the king. Because of this, we can't cut any down to repair or build new homes.

"I can't believe the lies they put into those things!" I tell Natán.

"What are you talking about?" he asks, even though he knows exactly what I'm talking about.

"'A great threat has befallen our nation' or 'they gather to oppress the good people'. It's like we have a new greatest threat to our safety every other month. This is just another lie they're telling us to make us work harder."

"Well, I mean you're right, but at least some of it has to be true, right? I mean they can't make up the entire thing!"

"Just let it go," I tell him, too tired of that argument to even address the possibility of it being true.

We return to our house, a small shack where we live with our father, a toolsmith. There is a large stone anvil in the back part of the house, where everything is covered in a layer of baked river mud that serves as a layer of brick, so that it doesn't burn. The secondary function of this room is a sleeping area, since the brick usually stays warm for a while after our father is done fixing tools for the town. And he only fixes them, not makes new ones, since the town has no ore deposits available to use.

We walk in through the front door, which is really just a leather flap covering the door frame. It's better than what most people have, which is a curtain made of woven weeds.

Our dad is in the back part of the house, and we can hear him pounding a metal tool with his stone hammer.

"Is that you, children?" he yelled in his deep gravelly voice. He can't see us since there is another leather flap separating the back of the house from the front.

"It's us dad!" Natán and I exclaim back. The rhythmic din emanating from the back of the house halts for a moment as our father tell us we can come in.

"You can watch if you'd like. Just stay by the walls, keep away from any sparks, you know the drill."

We rush into the back room, excited. Our dad doesn't always let us come in to the back room when he's fixing stuff for the town, so this is a special occasion for us. It's uncomfortably hot in the brick room, but it's worth it to see the next few moments.

He heats the metal tool up, a pitchfork head by the look of it, by making a small, concentrated stream of flame flow from his thumb. This ability to make fire is unique to only certain people born in the Fire Monarchy, and it's a prime distinguisher of us from the Water Nationer. Some of their people can control water and ice, but not steam, a big weakness in their power.

After the bent fork on the pitchfork is heated up enough, our dad brings his hammer down in a mighty arc, the stone head crashing into the toolhead as if willing it to fix itself. He strikes again and again, pushing the fork back to its original shape. Then, he tells us about the next step that he's going to take.

"Alright kids, we're going to heat treat the pitchfork now, ok?"

"Ok dad," Natán and I say together.

"So what I'm going to do," our dad says, "Is heat this pitchfork up, and then let it cool in this bucket of sand. It's going to harden the steel so that this doesn't bend again, right?"

"Right," Natán said rather matter-of-factly.

"Alright. So watch," our dad said as he started. A stream of fire so hot it turned blue flew from his fingertips and heated the metal in moments. Then, he lifted the pitchfork in is gloved hand, and carefully placed it in the sand pile, making sure the entire thing was covered with sand, before sliding it over to the far corner where no one could trip on it and spill its contents out.

"And we're done, just like that," he said. Natán and I were both impressed, but Natán was trying to act like he could do the job just as easily.

We walked out of the forging room and into the main room, where we sit down around a table. We sit on the ground on mats of woven vines, around the low-standing table. The table is a simple construction made of scrap wood and scraped smooth with pieces of leftover grit-rocks, the rocks that we use to sharpen tools.

Our uncovers the wooden bowl in the center of the table, revealing the freshly baked bread inside. Natán had mixed and kneaded the dough yesterday, and our dad had baked it in a kiln used for a different heat treating method.

There is also a small, plain, cooked fish. Our dad divides the portions so that a fight doesn't start over who gets which part of the fish or which part of the loaf of bread. He first puts aside a small portion from both the bread and the fish for the food tithe, the payment in food that is obligated of all citizens to be given to the Fire Monarchy Army. The "Holy Warriors" as they are called, "deserve this thanks for their service," in the words of a past messenger to our small town.

Our dad divides the fish and bread into three more portions, an equal serving for us all. Natán digs into his food, ravenously eating the small portion on his plate. I eat more slowly, and when he's finished, he realizes that he's eaten all of his food and now has no more. I notice him glancing at the portion set aside for the Army with a guilty expression on his face.

"No you don't," I tell him, "you don't want to make that mistake." I rip my already small piece of bread in half and give to him.

"Take this instead," I tell him.

"Won't you be hungry?" he asks me.

"You need it more than I do," I reply, "what with the testing ceremony coming up." The testing ceremony is the annual ceremony in which the town tests boys of the age of ten to fifteen for the ability to control and create fire. It takes place in a week.

"Actually," interjected our dad, "you'll need it just as much your brother, Amber. The king just changed the law. They'll be testing girls and boys this year. Now, if you're so hungry Natán, take my bread, not Amber's. I need to lose some weight anyway." He gives his bread to Natán.. He doesn't need to lose weight. He's actually noticeably thinner than he was a year ago, and it's hard anyway, raising two children by yourself.

Our mom died when we were really young, but our dad certainly remembers her. Sometimes, he takes out a sketch of her that he drew when she was still alive, back when he still drew.

We ponder the change in plans quietly as we eat. Natán is ten this year so he'll be tested. I'm twelve, and they just changed the law, so I'll be tested as well. I never really expected to ever get the chance to find out if I could control fire, but this year, I will.


	2. Chapter 2

A week later, Natán's Perspective

Amber and I head to the town square together. It's the day of the testing ceremony, and I'm so excited to find out if I can control fire or not. If I can, then I'll be able to help the Fire Monarchy even more than I normally would in fighting the evil Water Nationers. I can imagine it now, forging weapons with my dad, or even better, serving in the Army to protect the Fire Monarchy from the evil forces gathering to attack us.

Then, the smallest flicker of my mind thinks about the Water Nationers perspective, what they think about all this. But I stop myself from thinking too hard on it. They're the enemy, I tell myself.

In the town square, everyone in the town between the ages of ten and fifteen are gathered to be tested. On the whole, it's a pretty small group. We can fit comfortably in the square, or rather, uncomfortably, as there is so much space in between people that it hardly feels like a group at all. I count only thirteen people in total, counting Amber and I, making it a meager crowd if I've ever seen one.

We stand quietly for a while, not sure what to expect, until the village elder arrives to administer the testing. He's an old man, leaning heavily on a cane. I've seen him around before, helping to organize during the harvest and other times.

He clears his throat once and everyone turns to face him. He addresses the small group simply and quietly.

"After today, all of you will know if you have any control at all over the elemental force of fire. I will give you all a clear crystal, and you will focus your whole mind on creating fire. If, after a few minutes of this focus, the crystal starts changing color, we will know that you have control over fire. Okay?"

He hands out the clear crystals, basically little marbles. I do as he says, and concentrate as hard as I can on creating fire. I spend a whole two minutes thinking about it, imagining fire coming from my fingertips like they do from my dads. And sure enough, the crystal starts changing color, starting at orange, then shifting to red, then finally, deepening into a dark red-purple kind of color. The elder looks at my crystal, the only one that changed color out of anyone's, and says,

"Well, you got lucky. No one else here has the power to control fire, but you do. Good job." The response seems kind of, I don't know, uncaring. But that can't dim the elation I feel at being able to control fire.

"Before you go, hand me the crystal," the elder says. I give him the small marble, then start to saunter off. Behind me, I hear him say

"The rest of you may keep your crystals." It's the smallest phrase, but I remember Amber. I turn towards her, and I see that she has a disappointed look on her face. She didn't show any ability for controlling fire. Her marble stayed clear the whole time.

I just stare at her marble, and realize how much everything is going to change.


	3. Chapter 3

Ten Years Later, Natán's Perspective

I'm going on my first mission with the military in my career. I was sent to their training camp when I turned eleven, and I've been there ever since. The army enlisted me since I had control over fire, so here I am.

We are going to be attacking the hideout of a Water Nation terrorist, a man who has reportedly murdered defenseless citizens of the Fire Monarchy, and has sabotaged military hardware. Our orders are to kill everyone in the area. It's a fairly propaganda-esque mission, but at least we're protecting our country, even if the details of the provocation aren't entirely true.

We are currently sneaking through the jungle in lines with intervals between people, so that no one attack is able to kill more than one of our soldiers.

It's hot and humid, and we have to stop ourselves from tripping every three steps because of random vines and roots and bushes. I have to hold myself back from burning a four meter wide path through the jungle all the way to the beach where we are attacking.

I see the leader of our line, a man ten paces ahead of me, signal to stop for final orders. I relay the order back down the line. The leader pulls out his copy of the mission plan, and starts relaying it silently towards me with hand signals. I send those back down the line as well, making sure to absorb them fully.

We are to terminate everyone at the hideout and everyone in the surrounding area on the grounds of suspicion of conspiracy. Pretty standard, or so I've heard. Granted, the censorship teams make sure that everyone firmly denies all allegations of attacking innocents not proven guilty.

We fan out across the jungle towards our objective, making an arc to encircle and secure the area. I'm part of the left arm of the arc, responsible for ensuring that the target doesn't escape to the ocean, where he'll be at full power.

I run across the jungle floor silently, glancing at my feet occasionally to make sure that I don't trip on anything. I reach the jungle border where it meets the beach, and I look at the objective, a small house, a shack almost, basically the size of my childhood home. I can see people scrambling to get out of the house before the assault team arrives.

I sprint across the pristine white beach so that I can put myself between the house and the sea green ocean. A man runs out of the house and starts sprinting towards the ocean. I'm slightly faster than him, but he's got a head start, so it's anyones' guess who will make it to the ocean first. In the end, it's a tie, but that's still bad for me, since now he has a weapon.

I duck his first attack, a volley of spinning ice shards launched towards my face. I end up losing my balance and fall, but I roll and use the momentum to send my own attack, a wheel of burning red flame too large to dodge. Luckily for him, a wave is approaching and he pushes it forward to block my attack. The wave crashes into me forcefully, and I'm not prepared for it' s impact.

Now this is where it gets hard for me. Since I'm covered in water, he can just freeze me. I have to send a quick blast of flame at him that he easily dodges, but buys me time to get out of the water. At this point, the fight is back to square one, him in the water, and me out of it. At square one though, I have the advantage of superior training, specifically in the art of killing Water Nationers.

I send a volley of attacks at him, a sweeping blast intended to make him duck or dive, then a plume of flame so that he has to block or be burned, and finally, a concentrated stream capable of breaking through the remaining meager defense that he can bring forth. It would've worked perfectly, but I've been too focused on my target to realize that a woman is running up to attack me from behind, and she pushes me face first into the water, then freezes my body into the beach.

She runs past me and dives into the water. As she does, though, I catch a glimpse of her face. I stop struggling and ask:

"Amber?" She turns but keeps swimming away. It can't be Amber, but the woman looks eerily close to how I remember Amber looking, but it's not her. It has to be random chance, unless...

"Mom!?" I call out. That's the only person who it could be, but I had no idea that she was still alive. She catches up to the man who is also swimming away, and I know there is nothing I can do to stop them. She glances back for just a moment, a look of regret on her face.

I melt the ice on my body with a quick burst of fire, and stand up. I know that I won't be able to catch up to them. They're natural swimmers and they're in their element.

I've hated the Water Nation my entire life, I believed what the Fire Monarchy said about them, but in the end, what did they do that warranted that trust? My family lived in poverty, and we were considered to be well off for our town. We had warm beds at night, but those beds were made of brick, and Amber and I were slightly malnourished, us being lucky enough that our father was willing to sacrifice his health for mine and Amber's. And now, it seems as if that wasn't all that the Fire Nation did. It appears that they took my mother as well.

I turn to face the hideout house on the beach, and I see my squad warily approaching, ten men and women in their jungle camo suits, spread out in a large arc around me. Some of them have fire readied in their fists as they come close, but most don't. The squad leader steps forward, differentiated from the others only by the yellow band on her arm. She warily walks to a point ten paces from me, problematically close if she intends to fight, but not an immediate danger.

"Gold Ten, stand down," she says. I just stand there, trying to anticipate what's going to happen.

"Gold Ten, acknowledge," she says louder after I don't answer.

"Order acknowledged, Gold Leader," I respond. I take a step forward, doing so as non threateningly as possible, keeping my center of balance high and my hands at my sides, but my squad crouches into fighting position as soon as I do so. I step back, not wanting to spark a fight just yet.

The entire squad moves forward as one, until there are only five paces between me and the squad leader, and ten paces from each of the other members of the squad currently in the arc around me.

I start backing up, but my foot quickly reaches the mushy part of the shoreline that will make it hard to fight on. I stop, carefully noting which of my squad members are lighting their hands with fire or are drawing weapons.

"This is your last chance Gold Ten. Stand down," the squad leader says.

"Order acknowledged," I answer. I have only one option if I don't want to be tortured and eventually killed for information, and that's to attack. I'll have only one chance, and I'll have to be perfect.

The squad arc formation slowly closes, until the entire squad is seven paces away, with the squad leader having stepped back to meld into the formation.

I attack. Blue fire leaps from my hands towards the sand around me, the sand quickly melting into glass. Those in the squad with knives or throwing stars throw them, but the intense heat and pressure wave throws them high into the air. Others in the squad try to burn me with their own fire, but where their attacks meet my plume of flame, it flashes to blackness, somehow being absorbed into my attack.

The ground at their feet becomes extremely runny glass, the powerful heat melting it beyond normal levels. I fall to a knee, then I'm just lying on the ground, the intense effort encapsulated in the fire plume leeching energy quickly from my body.

Those in the squad with control over fire use it to create a shield around their bodies as they sink into the beach, but the two that can't are burnt to the bone in seconds. I hope that their nerves burnt off faster than they could send pain to their brains, but there's nothing I can do if they didn't.

With eight of the squad in the ground, immobilized, I let the flame plume end. It took everything I had to create such a powerful heat wave, and I can feel the pain behind my eyes from when I didn't look away from the bright flame quick enough.

The glass cools quickly, aided by the constant wind and water lapping at its surface before evaporating away. I sit down to rest, making sure that none of the squad is in any position to threaten me. Within ten or fifteen minutes, the glass has cooled into a hard sheet several meters thick, the bones of the dead immortalized in the glass. The eight still living members of the squad are stuck quite thoroughly, having been barely able to make a thermobaric shield around themselves before sinking into the ground.

I stand up, and walk up to the glass sheet. My squad members are looking at me with anger in their eyes, but I can't say that I returned it. I don't hate these people, just like I've decided not to hate the Water Nation anymore, a decision I'll be hard pressed to keep. But I can't let them live. They'll escape eventually, and come after me.

I prepare a ball of flame in my hand, pouring more and more of my dwindling energy into the globe, keeping it as small as possible. I throw it down at the glass, releasing all of the stored energy in the ball. The blast throws me into the air, the angle of the explosion causing me to land in the ocean on my back, all of the air in my lungs bursting out of my body. I sink into the ocean, panicking, before I see the sun, and start swimming up towards the surface.

I reach the surface, taking in a big gasp of air, while I register the loud ringing in my ears. I look towards the beach, dark eye spots from the light of the blast covering most of my vision. I see that the large glass sheet that had formed is now shattered into tiny shards, much of it stained red from my squads subsequent attempt to escape it's sharp embrace.

I try not to think of their pain as I float on the water, staring directly into the sun. I know that it's damaging my eyes, but I can't bring myself to care. Maybe blind, rather than seeing the world as people say it is, I'll see it how it really is: grim, bitter, and dark as night.


End file.
